Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [68]
Reaching for two clearly unwashed glasses, she said: “Fix you a drink?”
“We’re already at the legal limit,” Anakin said, vigilant.
The remark made her smile. “Naos Three doesn’t have a legal limit, kid.” She took a healthy swallow from her own glass, eyeing them over the rim. “I have to say, you’re not what I expected.”
“Was that surprise or disappointment?” Anakin asked Obi-Wan.
“Who were you expecting?” Obi-Wan said.
“Your classic rough-and-tumble types. Black Sun lackeys, bounty hunters. You two … You look more like lost Jedi.” She paused, then said: “Maybe that’s exactly what you are. Jedi have been known to outpunish even the punishers.”
“Only when necessary,” Anakin said.
She shrugged absently. “You want to do it here, or are you going to buy me a last meal?”
“Do what here?” Obi-Wan said.
“Kill me, of course.”
Anakin took a forward step. “There’s always that possibility.”
She glanced from him to Obi-Wan. “Bad Jedi. Good Jedi.”
“We want to talk to you about a star courier you piloted for Sienar Advanced Projects.”
She nodded at Obi-Wan. “Of course you do. A round of questions and answers, then a blaster—no, a lightsaber to the side of the head.”
“Then you are Fa’ale Leh.”
“Who told you where to find me? Had to be Thal K’sar, am I right? He’s the only one still alive. That betraying little Bith—”
“Tell us about the courier,” Anakin said, cutting her off.
She smiled in apparent recollection. “An extraordinary ship—a work of genius. But I knew going in, it was a job that would come back to haunt me. And so it has.”
Obi-Wan looked around the room. “You’ve been in hiding here for more than ten years.”
“No, I came for the beaches.” She motioned in dismissal. “You know, they killed the engineers, the mechanics, just about everyone who worked on that craft. But I knew. I made the delivery, grabbed what was due me, and I was away. Not far enough, though. They tracked me to Ryloth, Nar Shaddaa, half the starforsaken worlds in the Tingel Arm. I had my share of close calls. I could show you the scars.”
“No need,” Obi-Wan said as Fa’ale was bringing her left head-tail over her shoulder.
She threw back another drink. “So who sent you—Sienar? Or was it the one the courier was built for?”
“Who was it built for?” Anakin said.
She regarded him for a moment. “That’s the funny thing. Sienar—Raith Sienar himself—told me it was for a Jedi. But the guy I handed the yoke over to—he was no Jedi. Oh, he had a lightsaber and all, but … I don’t know, there was something off about him.”
Obi-Wan nodded. “We’ve had dealings with him.”
“Where did you deliver it?” Anakin pressed.
“Well, to Coruscant, of course.”
Obi-Wan glanced at the ceiling.
An instant before it blew inward—raining plastoid rafters, ice-covered roof panels, ceiling tiles, and two heavily armed Trandoshans—he had rushed to the bed and overturned it, dumping Fa’ale Leh, foam mattresses, and bedcovers onto the cold floor.
In hand and activated, Anakin’s lightsaber was already a streak of blue light, deflecting blaster bolts and parrying swings of a vibro-ax in the meaty hands of a red-skinned Falleen who had burst through the door. Behind the Falleen came two humans who, in their eagerness to race into the room, had wedged themselves in the door frame.
Whirling, Obi-Wan called his lightsaber from his belt and leapt to the doorway, his blade slicing both hands off one of the humans. An agonized howl pierced the frigid air as the man sank to his knees. Unstuck, the second one fell forward, directly onto Obi-Wan’s blade. The smell of burned flesh filled the room, swirling about with smoke from the explosive that had taken out three square meters of roof, and big wet snowflakes that were drifting though the opening.
Off to Obi-Wan’s left Anakin stood unmoving in the center of the